Puppy has been my sole operating system since around version 1.0.2 starting with Grafpup - and approximately a year before officially joining this forum. ( I tend to lurk around a forum for a year or more before joining. )

Before Puppy I was using a mix of Windows 98se and AstonShell - a desktop environment created for Windows which, when selected, "puts Windows to sleep" and then itself runs upon the Windows .dll files, sort of a "mini-OS" in and of itself and nothing like LiteSTEP and other shells made to operate upon Windows in place of the Explorer.exe.

Before that I used a pre-alpha version of what later became known as Windows 95 - a friend of a friend was an alpha/beta tester/programmer for Redmond who used to "lose" his disks. And before that - and for years at that - I was an Apple IIe user. I guess I really date myself here? Although I know Sage ( amongst a few others here ) have been using computers, and coding, for far longer than I. LOL!

Still... in all of my 26+ years of using computers I've found nothing with the beauty, inside and out, of Puppy!

My default is 3 Headed Dog while my wife and grand-kiddos use Lucid-Pup 528.005 and love it immensely.

At home I'm on Puppy 90% of the time, sometimes I have to use Windows for Photoshop and Dreamweaver, and I do remote support for friends and family with CrossLoop. I suppose I could fart around with Wine but I have several machines and it's just easier to use a KVM and have a separate Windows box.

At work I am on Windows all the time. _________________Tahr Pup 6 on desktop, Lucid 3HD on lappie

For my old HP a800n, Puppy 5.2.8 (frugal install) is my primary OS. I tend to use this computer the most among my home computers because it's the most fun. I picked it up off of Craigslist for $35 and had to put in a hard drive. This is also my test box. This computer is setup for multiple boot, with WinXP, several puppies and Ubuntu 12.04. WinXP doesn't run as quickly for web surfing (especially Chrome browser), and Ubuntu is still buggy. Puppy runs like a dream surfing the internet. For the internet, no other OS is as fast. Puppy is the most fun and rewarding. I love how easy and quick it is to install. I like how Puppy runs off of RAM, and the Hard Drive rarely spins. Bootup and shutdown is very quick. If I mess something up, it's easy to delete my save file, and replace it with my backup.

My piece of shit work computer struggles on WinXP, but runs fairly well on Puppy. I have to hit ctrl-alt-backspace a couple times during the day when it freezes up on Puppy 5.2.5.

There are a few issues though. It doesn't support multiple monitors, as far as I know. I can't get wireless printing. It may be possible, but so far I haven't figured it out. I use Vista, Win7, Ubuntu 12.04 and MacOSX 10.6.8, and with these other OS's, it was easy to setup wireless printer support. I don't do a lot of printing, so it's not that big of a deal. I also cannot get Google Chrome, Chromium, Iron to install on 5.2.8. USB wireless support can be a little frustrating, but I do have a wireless USB dongle that is plug and play. I purchased a different wireless USB which has linux driver's on the manufacturer website. However, as a novice Linux user, I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to install/work. It would be cool for Puppy to have a suspend or sleep mode. Maybe there is, but I don't know how to set it up.

I can't get wireless printing. It may be possible, but so far I haven't figured it out. I use Vista, Win7, Ubuntu 12.04 and MacOSX 10.6.8, and with these other OS's, it was easy to setup wireless printer support. I don't do a lot of printing, so it's not that big of a deal. .

I can't get wireless printing. It may be possible, but so far I haven't figured it out. I use Vista, Win7, Ubuntu 12.04 and MacOSX 10.6.8, and with these other OS's, it was easy to setup wireless printer support. I don't do a lot of printing, so it's not that big of a deal. .

I've used Puppy as my primary OS since the 421 release (412 was the first I tried, but it stayed only in limited use). I've used 421, 430, 431, 511, 525, 528 and 531 as my primary OS so far, and I usually try to migrate all of my computers to new versions (if/when I upgrade) all within a day or two of each other. A common base system across all my hardware makes maintaining my installed applications and tweaking my system(s) a bit easier.

Right now I'm still running Slacko 531 on two towers and a laptop, and also have 531 installed to a USB flash drive and a USB hard drive. (I've tried migrating to 533, but have managed to botch it twice now. Might try again soon.)

Puppy is perfectly capable as a primary personal OS provided you aren't afraid of spending some time on the setup. The speed and control afforded by the system once appropriately tweaked is worth it, in my opinion, and the tiny footprint on the hard drive leaves more room for my pack rat file-saving habits.

I am using slacko-5.3.1 on usb. The other system is windows 7 with ntfs. I have a slow connection to the internet, thus, I mostly access the internet with lynx. I think I would use lynx anyway to avoid the billboards. I use seamonkey for this discussion group and e-mail. I use cli and puppy linx about 99% of the time.
James

Puppy 5.2.8 @ work and Win 7 @ work on different machines.
Puppy 5.2.8 on keychain pendrive. XP and Bodhi 1.4 on the desktop @ home
XP and Bodhi 1.4 on an older lappie which is destined to become my new file server. Vista and Bodhi 1.4 on the newer, faster (oldish) laptop

When you talk about tweaking, are you talking about cosmetic tweaking like the right background etc..., or it it more the fundementals of the OS?

Neither, really. Maybe somewhere in between...

I tend to make and install a lot of my own packages, and I tend to botch things a few times before I get it right. The whole idea with keeping my installations the same is that once I've gotten things steady then I can more reliably avoid programs or dependencies interfereing with one another, or causing instability. There is also a 'settings & preferences' and a cosmetic component to it, but that's secondary.

Put more simply, once I have one copy up and running smoothly, I basically just copy the save file and SFS files over to the second system, so that I don't have to do it over again. Updates for applications are the same thing: do them all at once, all the same way. (If I don't, it tends to make future updates more unpredictable, less uniform.) The only differences in packages installed between them come down to drivers.

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